The Spooky Universe

Everyone knows what the Big Bang is and as far as I know most scientists more or less take it as science fact. The author of the article seems to think that the theory is wrong and will soon give way to a newer better one that explains some of the anomalies that are talked about in the article. I will say he does make some interesting points.

However, I cannot figure out if this guy is joking and just writing the article to be funny. If you read his brief bio, while it is hilarious, I am not sure if that is the guy I am going to get my scientific information from. Even the comment on the page, which I also found funny, seems to be pointing at the article as some sort of joke. So I guess I will take it at just that, perhaps he is just poking fun at the overall theory stating that it needs to be retooled at best to help explain the age of certain characteristics in the universe, either way just something to think about.

Now, here is another article I wanted to talk about. The article which I think jumps down Einstein’s throat about Wave Function Collapse is a bit premature, or rather unjust. When this idea was first theorized he did say that it was “spooky” which I have to agree with him. When you really start to think about the theory it is rather bizarre, in fact I think it is one of the most bizarre things that we know to be true about our universe.

Let’s start with the Heisenberg’s uncertainty principle which states that a particles position and speed or momentum cannot be known simultaneously. It further states that the more accurately one variable is know the farther we are from knowing the other. I guess that makes sense, so if we know exactly where a particle is in the universe we cannot tell its speed, and if we know its exact speed then we cannot determine its location. I understand this idea but when you start to really look at this and how it applies to the real world it seems very silly, and once again just one of those weird things that make up our universe.

Now lest talk about Wave Function Collapse. Every particle in the universe is basically in two places at once, yeah wrap your head around that one. Only when we try to measure it, as stated above, does it make a sort of decision on where it actually is and its speed. You can see why Einstein had such a hard time saying that this is the way the universe works, and frankly I would be inclined to agree with him were it not for the experiments talked about in the article. Also, I think that even before this experiment I think most scientists and physicists more or less accepted this theory. So despite the weirdness of the theory it seems to be a fact now. The other thing here is that, as the article states, this somewhat disagrees with the theory of relativity. Let’s say that a particle is in two places and those two places happen to be on opposite sides of the universe. We know that it takes an observer making an observation for the particle to make a “decision” about its location and speed. So let’s say that here on Earth we make that observation and now the particle is here on Earth because we made the observation and know its exact location. So how did the particle more or less send a signal across the universe instantly to show itself on Earth? Again this is very bizarre, especially when Einstein states that nothing can travel faster than the speed of light. So how does this happen? I have no answers.

The problem with this is that it is not necessarily what we see or observe in the universe. Think back to Schrödinger and his famous cat experiment. That same principle applies here, because of the wave function collapse the cat is both alive and dead until we open the box. While we know that the cat cannot be both at the same time, but it takes an observer to finally figure it out.

As I have stated this is one of the weirdest things that happen in our universe. I would love to talk to a physicist and try to understand why this is the case. I would think that perhaps it is a way for the universe to have a truly infinite number of outcomes and possibilities. I would imagine that this would greatly increase the probability of the different outcomes that are possible in the universe, which could give rise to an infinite or near infinite universe.

So, let’s speculate that the universe is set up like a giant computer program, I am not saying that we are living in a simulation although that is a viable argument, but let’s just say that it is built similar to that. That is an incredibly insane amount of data and information being processed at one time, but let’s also say that whatever processors are out there can handle it no problem. Following this logic let’s say that to save space on the hard drive or computing power they programmers decided to code in the wave function collapse, basically making almost all possibilities possible, but to get an outcome an observer would be needed. So everything is going along fine until humans, or another intelligent species, comes along and makes any sort of observations. If this is the case or something along these lines I think it is a brilliant solution.

I would also like to say that I do not think our universe was “created” per our understanding of the word, but I think that if it was created then we are certainly living in a computer simulation. If this is indeed the real world and this is how nature and the universe really is structured then I think it is far stranger than anything we can ever imagine. If the latter is true I dare say that we may never truly understand the universe we live in, and the theory of everything that Hawking and so many other physicists are after will always be just beyond our mental comprehension.